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Rehavam Zeevi (1926 - October 17 2001) was an Israeli general, politician and historian who founded the right-wing Moledet party. He was assassinated by the PFLP becoming the only Israeli politician to die in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Rehavam Zeevi was born in 1926 in Jerusalem. He joined the Palmach in 1942, and served in the Israeli Defence Forces for the following 31 years. From 1964 to 1968 carried out the duties of the Chief of the Department of Staff in the Israeli General staff; in the next 5 years he has served as the Commander of the Central Military District (Hebrew: אלוף פיקוד המרכז). He retired in September 1973, only to re-join the army at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War (October 6, 1973). He then served for several more months as the Chief of the Department of Staff. He finally retired, in the rank of major-general (אלוף) in 1974.
Immediately afterwards, he became Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's consultant on combatting terrorism. The following year, 1975, he was appointed as the Prime Minister's consultant on matters of intelligence. Zeevi resigned from this position in 1977, following the election of the Likud premier minister Menachem Begin. In 1981, Zeevi was appointed the director of the Israel Museum in Tel-Aviv. In 1987, he co-edited a series of books describing various aspects of the Land of Israel, basing on artifacts from the Museum.
In 1988, Zeevi established Moledet. His movement's main political goal was the transfer of the Israeli Arabs to the neighboring Arab countries. Zeevi was greatly disappointed by the Madrid Conference of 1991, and consequently withdrew from the Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir. He stayed in the opposition for the following ten years. He disagreed strongly with the Avoda governments of 1992-1996 (led by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres) and 1999-2001 (Ehud Barak), however, he treated favourably the Netanyahu government of 1996-1999 and supported it from the outside.
In addition to Zeevi's explicit support of transfer, he often strongly implied he supported ethnic cleansing of Palestinians without quite saying so. He famously compared Palestinians to "lice" and "cancer". On different occasions, Zeevi also called for the invasion and conquest of Jordan and the resettlement of Palestinians into it1.
In 1999, his Moledet movement united with Herut and Tkuma into a single fraction — Ihud Leumi (National Union). Following the election of Ariel Sharon in February 2001, Zeevi joined the coalition and was made the Minister of Tourism on March 7, 2001. On October 14 Zeevi declared that his party was to quit the government following the withdrawal of Israeli Defence Forces from the Abu-Sneina neighborhood in Hebron. His resignation was to become active on October 17, 2001, at 11 a.m.
Zeevi was shot several minutes past 7 on Wednesday, October 17, 2001 by four militants. He was rushed to the Hadassah hospital where he was reanimated, but the medical efforts failed and he died, several minutes before 10 a.m. The PFLP terrorist organisation took responsibility for the murder and stated that it was in revenge for the assassination by Israel of Mustafa Ali Zibri, eliminated by Israel in August that year.
Footnotes
- Source: Suzanne Goldenberg, "Sharon's Guard Dog' Bares His Teeth; Minister In New Cabinet Wants All Palestinians Expelled", The Guardian (London), March 7, 2001.
ar:رحبعام زئيفي
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